Like many involved in the domain name industry, I like to read books. I decided to organize the non-fiction and fiction books I've read and am reading using the GoodReads website and app. GoodReads allows members to create community groups, and I noticed that there wasn't one associated with the domain name industry, so I … Continue reading "...

Today on X/Twitter, an eloquent speech from 2012 by Rowan Atkinson was resurfaced: The actor, famous for his role as Mr. Bean, made the strong case for free speech that is still relevant today.

From page 29 of the A-MARK PRECIOUS METALS, INC. SEC filing of today: In March 2024, JMB acquired $8.5 million of intangible assets that included Gold.com's domain name. Normally, given the widespread parasitic "journalism" in the domain name industry, I'd have kept this SEC filings research to myself. But, since it was widely known that … Co...

Happy Good Friday and Easter to those Christians who are celebrating their holiest days of the calendar this long weekend (Greek Orthodox Christians like myself will need to wait until May this year!) As I've noted before, I dont appreciate parasitic folks who are seeking to steal eyeballs and traffic for themselves, rather than simply … Cont...

I continue to not disclose new and significant domain name transactions that I've discovered via SEC filings research, due to parasites who do not properly cite that research and/or make copycat articles to generate pageviews and eyeballs for themselves. Instead of simply retweeting and linking to the original research itself, so that the original ...

Several weeks ago, I noticed that the elite 2-letter dot-com domain name EM.com had changed hands, with the "WHOIS" information of MarkMonitor's stealth acquisition unit: https://twitter.com/GeorgeKirikos/status/1697188222302859628 I've been monitoring that domain since that time, and it appears that Exxon Mobil is NOT the new owner of the domain n...

In August 2014, I noticed a potential security vulnerability in relation to the .mil top-level domain, which is operated by the US military. As such, I reported the issue to CERT, describing the issue in sufficient detail that they could understand the problem. Today, I learned via a tweet from Elliot Silver: Mali's ccTLD is … Continue re...

ICANN has posted their Public Comment Summary Report of the Proposed Renewal of the Registry Agreement for .NET. Once again, it is another sham review of the submissions of the public. Not only do they dismiss comments and concerns relating to the changes in the RRA, which we wrote about extensively. ICANN staff went even … Continue reading "...

On April 19, 2023, I highlighted negative aspects of the proposed .NET Registry Agreement between ICANN and Verisign. The public comment period ends on Thursday May 25, 2023 at 23:59 UTC (i.e. tomorrow), and I just submitted my company's final comments. I encourage others who care about the rights of registrants to do the same. … Continue rea...

ICANN, the organization that regulates global domain name policy, and Verisign, the abusive monopolist that operates the .COM and .NET top-level domains, have quietly proposed enormous changes to global domain name policy in their recently published "Proposed Renewal of the Registry Agreement for .NET", which is now open for public comment. Either ...

ICANN has a public comment period for the Final Report from the EPDP on Specific Curative Rights Protections for IGOs, which proposes to harm registrants' rights, by making IGOs (intergovernmental organizations like the UN) exempt from the mutual jurisdiction clause of the UDRP/URS. This would mean that a domain owner's rights to judicial review of...

Konstantinos Zournas of OnlineDomain.com was the first to break the news concerning the lawsuit filed by VPN.com against "George Dikian". Today, both sides filed a "Joint Rule 26(f) Report" [PDF] which summarizes the case from the point of view of each side, and sets out scheduling going forward. Since it's such a short document, it's … Conti...

I've written extensively about the security implications of the "Losing FOA" step of domain name transfers. It's the opportunity for registrants to "ACK" or "NACK" a pending transfer, before it completes. I wrote about this again yesterday, and that post linked to all prior writings. I wanted to give readers direct visual evidence of why … Co...

Despite months spent educating stakeholders, registrars continue to threaten to weaken domain name transfer security. I have written extensively in the past few months about the ICANN Transfer Policy that a working group is currently reviewing, as the proposals in their Initial Report would harm domain name registrants by removing an important safe...